A local company plans to convert waste cooking oil into an environmentally-friendly fuel called biodiesel.

The Ministry of the Environment said the "wonder fuel" could be used to run thousands of pieces of construction equipment, trucks, buses, taxis and fishing boats. Environment Minister Neletha Butterfield said she "welcomed this new environmental initiative as one that can reduce waste while at the same time produce a useable, clean alternative source for diesel-burning engines".

Bermuda Biodiesel Ltd.'s idea has won the backing of the Bermuda National Trust and the Bermuda Biological Station for Research.

According to Bermuda Biodiesel president Stavros Walsh and vice president Paul Farrington the fuel would not only recycle a harmful waste product, it also burned much cleaner than regular diesel and was just as powerful and cheaper to buy.

"We are looking at two-thirds pump price," Mr. Walsh said yesterday.

"It will be cheaper." Mr. Walsh said burning massive amounts of cooking oil at Tynes Bay Incinerator clogged the grates which shut it down.

There were more than 400 restaurants in Bermuda ? excluding hotel kitchens ? that all used cooking oils which were either taken to the incinerator or poured down the drain, he said. This meant the Island was throwing away a potential bio-fuel.

It is not known how much oil gets thrown away in Bermuda. However, at the weigh-bridge incinerator between a Monday and a Friday in October 2003, he said, the Corporation of Hamilton alone dropped off between eight and ten tons of cooking oil.

"In summer that quadruples," he said.

The Health Department recommends that oil to fry vegetables gets changed every three days and oil to fry meat or fish, every two days, he said.

It takes 16 litres of oil to fill just one fryer and some big restaurants can have 15 industrial fryers, he said.

"Ultimately we want to go public with this," Mr. Walsh said. "We ultimately want to produce bio-fuel here on the Island for Government vehicles, taxis, school buses carrying kids, Belco, boats."

The process involves getting raw cooking oil and adding a caustic to it which causes a chemical reaction.

"For every litre of cooking oil used 92 percent of that is workable biodiesel," he said, adding the other eight percent becomes glycerin which can be used to make soap or burned to make electricity.

Eventually, participating surveyed restaurants will be provided with a way to filter and store their used oil so it can be easily collected by Bermuda Biodiesel, he said.

Mr. Walsh said Biodiesel was safe to use in engines as there is no difference in engine power and it will be certified to American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards.

While the company's project is ready to roll, it is still looking to finalise a location for a facility. The East End is preferred.

"Our biggest stumbling block at the moment is actually funding for all this," he said, adding the XL Foundation had already pledged support.

"Biodiesel, water and ice are all required by the commercial fishing industry in shore side facilities," he said. "We plan to produce all on the same site, using only alternative energy. It all ties in with the Ministry of Environment's White Paper on the Marine Environment and the Fishing Industry in Bermuda."

It could also be used to educate students, the general public or tourism, Mr. Walsh said.

"Not many kids ever get told an engine can be run off peanut oil. The idea is once we can showcase it here and make it all work is to maybe set other countries up a bit like Bermuda."

They will first go to construction companies to get them to use the fuel but ultimately would like to see green biodiesel pumps in local gas stations, like you might have seen in Europe in the last 20 years or the US for the last five years, he said.

It would also put an end to getting stuck behind a smelly truck or bus exhaust, he said.

"You can stand right behind that muffler and you won't even see anything coming out," Mr. Farrington said. "It would smell like whatever restaurant you took it from."